Have you run out of ideas for your catalogue? Find out how to use Google to find new products to sell

It’s time to broaden your eCommerce’s catalogue with new products.

But… which ones, exactly?

Being short on ideas, you decide to go on Google to look for other stores from your sector and try to get some inspiration on what to sell.

Sounds familiar?

Surely, you’ve been there before. And, hey… it’s not a bad thing or anything.

But what if we told you there are more interesting ways of using Google to find the products with the highest demand in your niche?

That’s exactly what you’ll learn in this post.

You’re about to learn all the secrets to make the best of Google (and its free tools, because Google is so much more than just a search engine) when it comes to updating your eCommerce catalogue.

Get ready to write this down because it’s on.

👉 2 ways of using Google’s search bar as an inspiration source (+ 1 tip to fine-tune searches)

First, we’ll focus on the search bar itself (we’ll leave the tools for later).

But trust us —there’s a lot to it.

✅ 1. Do niche-related searches (but not just the basic ones)

We’ve mentioned the easiest way of finding new product ideas using Google to find other stores from your niche.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

For example, let’s suppose you own a board game eCommerce. In addition to spying on your competitors, these are other sources of ideas you could find using Google.

• Influential niche blogs: in this kind of blogs, you’ll find reviews or rankings with the best board games of the year. If you see one that’s not in your catalogue, write it down. Also, check the comments section to see what users think and know what their favorite games are.
• Forums: these online communities are perfect to know users’ opinions on a specific product —just like a blog’s comments section.
• International stores: don’t just check your competitors’ stores; do research in foreign eCommerces. This way, you’ll be able to spot trending products in other countries that have not (yet) arrived to yours.

Bonus tip: check out related search suggestions at the end of Google’s result pages. You’ll be able to get very interesting terms to keep on searching or even for creating new product categories. 

For example, on this “board games” search, Google lets us know that users have also searched other terms such as “board games for teenagers” and “board games for adults.”

In case you hadn’t considered creating categories for those two types of product, it may be a good idea doing so.

✅ 2. Do a reverse image search

To give you some context:

Reverse image search is a kind of search in which we use images instead of words.

And this is useful… why?

Well, it allows you to get product ideas similar to the ones that sell well in your store.

For example, let’s say you own a home decor store and this set of cat curtains for kids’ rooms is a bestseller.

You download the image to your computer, go on Google’s image search site and drag the file onto the search box (or simply upload the image by clicking on the camera’s icon).

See what comes up.

Amongst the results, there are visually similar products to the image you uploaded (which you might want to include in your catalogue).

Write this one down… you might be surprised.

✅ Bonus: make the best of the advanced search settings to get just what you need

We all know Google contains an ocean of information, and unless we’re careful, we can end up drowning in results.

That’s why it’s ideal for your search to be as specific as possible.

So here’s when search filters come into play. They allow you to narrow down results by:

• Country.
• Publication date (for example, to search product reviews published during the last year only).
• Language.
• Etc.

Another trick is to use Google’s advanced search operators. For example, by writing one or more words in between quotation marks, Google will only show you results including that exact term.

In this Google post, you’ll be able to find all commands you can use to optimize your search to the fullest.

👉 Another way of using Google; make use of it free tools

Surely, by now you’re familiar with web analytics tools offered by the great G and you’re already using them in your online store.

But had you considered it can also be a source of ideas to broaden your catalogue?

This is how to use them.

✅ 1. Google Trends

Google Trends allows you to analyze the evolution of search trends of specific keywords.  

That means this tool will help us know:

• Which products have a higher demand at a given time.
• Which could become top products in the future (because their popularity keeps on growing).
• Products whose demand has been regular in the last years (and are therefore a safe bet).

Keeping this information in mind, you’ll be able to include in your catalogue only those products you know your audience will buy for sure.

For example, let’s imagine you own a drug store and would like to know whether vitamin D supplements are highly demanded or not. We type “vitamin D” on Google Trends and we get a graph like this one:

We can see searches for this term are more or less frequent in time (with high peaks in colder seasons, which is when these supplements are taken) and they’ve been rising in recent years.

Having this information at hand allows you to assess including these supplements in your catalogue or even to determine when’s the best time to publish offers for this product.

Note: to make the most of this tool, we suggest you take a look at our Google Trends tutorial.

✅ 2. Google Search Console

With Google Search Console you can know the searches that make your store show up on Google (and which get you more traffic).

This way, you’ll know what kind of products your customers are more interested in.

If, for example, you know many users came into your store looking for “kids curtains”, you could grab the opportunity of including more curtain models for kids in your catalogue.

Would you like to know more about Google Search Console?

Swing by our tutorial and make the best of this tool by Google.

✅ 3. Google Analytics

Analytics is a must for any online store, since it offers highly valuable data about your store’s web performance.

Amongst other features, this tool allows you to know the:

• Categories.
• Product cards.
• Blog posts.

That are getting the most visitors.

So, for example, if on your blog you have a Maybelline lipstick review that’s getting a lot of traffic, that means your audience is interested in this product.

Therefore, it could be a good idea to include more products from the same brand in your catalogue.

If you still haven’t caught up with Google Analytics, here are these posts for you:

• How to install Google Analytics 4 in your e-commerce (updates + setup tutorial).
• [Google Analytics Mega-Tutorial] Learn to monitor the most important e-commerce metrics

✅ 4. Google Ads keyword planner

Last, another way of finding new products to sell is by analyzing the keywords in your niche with the most searches.

For this purpose, you can use Google Ads keyword planner for free.

You only need to type in a specific term to know how many searches it gets per month (besides, the tool offers other related keywords, which will also serve as inspiration).

👉 What if you could know the products that are more demanded by your own customers?

Using the tips we’ve given you so far, you’ll be able to find the products with the highest demand in your niche.

But, wouldn’t it be much more interesting to know which are the ones your customers  (the actual people visiting your eCommerce) are looking for?

You can use your internal search engine to do that.

The thing is through this tool (and through the searches users make on it) you can find out:

• Which products your customers are most interested in.
• Which product cards get the most clicks when search results show up.
• Unsuccessful searches, which are actually lost sales opportunities.

It’d be almost like reading your buyers’ minds, right?

“Wait a second now… where would I get such data from?”

That’s the thing. Basic search engines (the ones that come along with templates), don’t offer these statistics.

In order to access them you need a smart search engine; one like Doofinder, which in addition to offering this information, it also optimizes the search experience (helping customers find just what they want) and increases sales up to 20%.

If you’d like to see for yourself, you can try Doofinder for free for 30 days by clicking here.

👉 Now you know how to make the best of Google to broaden your catalogue

As you can see, Google does so much more than helping you spy on your competitors.

We hope all this is useful the next time you’re updating your catalogue.

And if you still want more, you can have a look at this post, in which we give some extra advice to find new ideas for selling products.

Are you ready to have your store overflow with bestsellers (and get ahead of your competitors?) 😉